[Koha] Libraries, template toolkit and notices

[Stephen Graham]

Hi Koha Users - I have a question regarding the best way to send different email notices for different items when you want to include completely different email text. The last time I looked at using the template toolkit functionality in a notice it seemed that if a user had several different item types, the TT would allow me to check the item type and act accordingly, but only within one email. So if we wanted to send "radically" different emails for different items types, then it wasn't really possible because all the information would be contained in one long email. Not sure if this is still the case? For example, we loan out PCs for a year, and when we want to send PREDUEDGST emails then all the instructions and information is completely different than what we say when the item is a book or a Chromebook etc.

What we have done in the past to get around this is to create a new library for some of our different items, then for PREDUEDGST we can run the advance_notices.pl script with the --digest-per-branch and that would send separate emails based on library. For our ODUE notices we have a separate notice for each library - e.g. we have a Laptop Locker library with it's own associated notice and a default "all libraries"  notices which deals with book items.

We are just wondering how other people deal with this, and what the best practice would be. Happy to use TT if it can send several emails rather than one, but creating new Libraries just to send different notices seems "wrong".

Cheers, Stephen

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Stephen Graham
Library Technology Consultant
Library and Computing Services

University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB

Email: s.graham4 at herts.ac.uk<mailto:s.graham4 at herts.ac.uk>
Website: herts.ac.uk